soldier admits randomly shooting iraqis

Soldier says he randomly shot at Iraqis

The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Jan 9, 2008 

FORT CARSON, Colo. — The Army is investigating possible war crimes after a Fort Carson soldier facing first-degree murder charges in the slayings of two Iraq war veterans told investigators he and another soldier randomly fired at Iraqi civilians.

Pfc. Bruce Bastien Jr. and two former soldiers face charges in the December shooting death of Spc. Kevin Shields, while Bastien and one of those former soldiers face charges in the Aug. 4 shooting death of Pfc. Robert James.

Fort Carson spokeswoman Dee McNutt confirmed the Army investigation detailed in a motion filed by prosecutors Tuesday seeking to combine the two slayings into one case.

Bastien said he and another soldier used stolen AK47 military rifles to shoot at civilians while their unit patrolled Baghdad neighborhoods while they were in Iraq.

“The sound of an AK47 is very distinctive,” the motion quotes Bastien as telling Fort Carson Special Agent Kelly Jameson on Dec. 10. “So if there were any questions when the shooting was heard, Bastien said they could claim they were taking on hostile fire.”

Bastien spoke with Jameson, an Army criminal investigator, after his arrest in Shields’ slaying. Attempts to reach Jameson were referred to McNutt, who released a statement saying the allegations were being taken very seriously and would be thoroughly investigated.

Messages left for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command were not immediately returned.

Charged in the death of Shields are Bastien, 21, and former soldiers Louis Edward Bressler, 24, of Charlotte, N.C., and Kenneth Eastridge, 24, of Louisville, Ky. Shields was found dead, with multiple gunshot wounds, early Dec. 1 on a sidewalk near Old Colorado City north of the post.

Bressler and Bastien also face first-degree murder charges in the Aug. 4 death of James, whose bullet-riddled body was found in a car in a bank parking lot near the base.

All three were being held at the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center without bond. They are due back in court Jan. 25.

Shields, Bressler, Eastridge and Bastien served together in Iraq with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. The soldiers were in the same platoon of C Company, 2nd Battalion of the 12th Infantry Regiment. All four came home this spring and summer, months earlier than other soldiers in the unit.

James served with Fort Carson’s 43rd Area Support Group and served in Iraq. It was unclear how he knew the suspects, though investigators believe he was killed as part of a robbery. Investigators believe Shields was killed after a fight with one of the men as he celebrated his 24th birthday.

In court documents, Bastien is quoted as saying that he drove while Eastridge would shoot at Iraqi civilians who happened to be along the street.

“Bastien said that he knows that an Iraqi civilian was struck on at least one occasion,” according to the motion.

Calls to the Colorado Springs public defender’s office, which is representing Eastridge and Bastien, went unanswered. An e-mail request for comment was not immediately returned.

Tira Bressler told The Gazette of Colorado Springs that her husband was being “set up” and that he was “wrongfully accused.”

“I talked to my husband. He said ‘Why would I harm a good friend from Iraq?”’ Tira Bressler told The Gazette.

Both Bressler and Eastridge were trained as infantry riflemen. Eastridge was wounded in combat and had received the Purple Heart and Army Achievement medals, Army records show.

Bastien served as a medic, earning the combat medical badge for rendering aid under enemy fire.

world health organization re-evaluates mortality rate in iraq

151,000 Iraqis killed in three years (2003-2006)

Reuters | Thursday, 10 January 2008

About 151,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the three years following the US-led invasion of their country, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 

The new study, which said violent deaths could have ranged from 104,000 to 223,000 between March 2003 and June 2006, is the most comprehensive since the war started.

The study drew on an Iraqi health ministry survey of nearly 10,000 households – five times the number of those interviewed in a disputed 2006 John Hopkins University study that said more than 600,000 Iraqis had died over the period.While well below that figure, the United Nations agency’s estimate exceeds the widely-cited 80,000 to 87,000 death toll by the human rights group Iraq Body Count, which uses media reports and hospital and morgue records to calculate its tally.

”There are a lot of uncertainties in making such estimates,” WHO statistician Mohamed Ali, who co-authored the study, told reporters on a conference call.He said insecurity made parts of Baghdad and Anbar provinces unreachable for those conducting the survey, which included questions about other topics including pregnancy and disease.

Many families also fled their homes as a result of the violence, and some left the country, making it hard to give a precise assessment of the violence in Iraq. As a result, Ali said the margin of error for the toll was relatively high.Still, he said the household survey’s large scale gave the findings more weight than previous attempts to estimate the number of Iraqis killed in battles between and among military forces, insurgents and sectarian fighters.

The John Hopkins University report, published by the British medical journal Lancet, which was based on a smaller-scale Iraqi survey, drew criticism from the White House and elsewhere for appearing to exaggerate the Iraqi death rate.Iraqi Health Minister Saleh al-Hasnawi described the latest WHO report as “very sound” and said the survey indicated “a massive death toll since the beginning of the conflict”.

”I believe in these numbers,” he told the conference call.

The White House said it had not seen the study, but mourned the deaths of Iraqi civilians.”

The unmistakable fact is that the vast majority of these deaths are caused by the willful, murderous intentions of extremists committed to taking innocent life,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.”It is also beyond dispute that more Iraqi citizens would be condemned to death and oppression if they were abandoned by America and our coalition partners.”

The US Department of Defence said enormous precautions were taken to avoid civilian deaths and injuries.More than half of the violent deaths documented in the WHO report occurred in Baghdad.

An average of 128 Iraqis suffered violent deaths every day in the first year following the invasion. The next year, an average of 115 were killed daily and 126 died from violence each day in the third year after the war started.

Estimates of Iraq’s civilian deaths have been hampered by the lack of a well-functioning death registration system, the WHO said.

Some 3915 US and 174 British forces have died since the war began. Between 4900 and 6375 Iraqi military personnel are thought to have died, though no reliable official figures have been issued since new security forces were set up in late 2003.

Death tolls have fallen in recent months as the number of violent attacks in Iraq has declined.